


Stumbling in love is a painless process (but the pains it brings are endless)

by TerresDeBrume



Series: SEADLA Verse [9]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re not a couple. They are <i>not, they are not,</i> they. Are. <i>Not</i>. A. Couple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stumbling in love is a painless process (but the pains it brings are endless)

**Author's Note:**

> A small piece about Loki, and how he thinks about his relationship to Tony. Takes place at the same time as chapter 9 of _S.O.S Ecrits Avec De L'Air_ (SEADLA for short.)
> 
> This was written for the 30 Days writing challenge circulating on Tumblr :)

They are not a couple.

Loki doesn’t even have to remind himself of that: he needs only look. Twice he was wed, and that thing he has now with Tony feels nothing like it.  
They are no couple, for Tony doesn’t -shouldn’t- trust him, and if he does it is only because he allows himself to be mistaken on Loki’s identity. What does it matter that they walk together down the streets and let their shoulders bump together when Tony seldom uses his name anymore? Perhaps wearing the same appearance twice was a mistake. Loki let himself be lulled into comfort by the illusion of Lorna, too.  
She looks like Serrure, a bit, with a wider nose and thicker hair, and more ink in her skin. She is more confident, too. Lorna was the body Sigyn used to touch, the one she awakened to love with her lips and skin, and Loki likes this skin all the more for the faint tingling of love spells branded into his very bone.  
Watch, this body says, there was once one person who loved Loki as a man and a woman both.  
  
Tony doesn’t do that.  
He smiles and listens and gives comforting pats on the shoulder but he doesn’t see -refuses to see what truly lies beneath.  
In their stolen moments together, Loki spills secrets he never told Thor or his parents, but everything he says here Sigyn has heard first, with all the tears and pain he could not yet keep at bay -all the things he had no need or desire to hide at the time. There is nothing here that marks Tony as a confident, for Loki knows he can’t -shouldn’t trust him.  
  
And yet.  
Loki is not such a fool as to mistake desire for love, not since Angrboda, but there are… Signs. Little shivers of the soul when Tony speaks and smiles, a fluttering of the heart when he chuckles and Loki is the source that betray the truth as surely as a beacon chases the night.  
Loki’s neck burns and his hands shake, and even as he plunges them in the pockets of Lorna’s cargo jeans, and shrugs with a self-confident air, the beating of his heart increases as he chastises himself for the way his stomach flutter when he thinks tomorrow is Monday again.  
  
 _Fool_ , he thinks,  _seven times a fool is what you are. Love is never more than the beginning of your troubles._  
  
He berates himself all night, but when Monday comes and with it the time to see Tony Stark, Loki’s heart flutters anew and even the fear he feels can’t prevent him from walking to his doom with a spring in his step.  
When he doesn’t get a reply to the text he sent celebrating Tony’s first month sober, Loki’s breath catches in his throat as violently as it did wen his body would not leave his mare form and he realizes, too late, that his problems started a long, long time ago.


End file.
